The reinforced plastic industry uses fiberglass cuttings mixed with catalyst and resin components to produce a wide variety of materials and products. For example, glass roving mixed with a resin/catalyst mixture provides a construction which can be used for boat hulls, car bodies, shower stalls and a wide variety of fiberglass reinforced plastic products.
Roving is presently used in the form of continuous filaments collected into a plurality of strands that may contain two hundred to four hundred individual filaments. The roving is fed into an air driven cutter which cuts the strands into predetermined lengths which are discharged into the path of resin/catalyst fluid stream. The roving cutter generally cuts the strand into one inch lengths. Additionally, one to up to six strands of glass roving may be fed to the cutter through roving guide passages in a feed bar. Generally the feed bar will have three adjacent passages.
The roving cutter typically includes a roller having a plurality of cutting blades in engagement with a backup roller referred to as an anvil. The strands of roving pass between the blades of the cutter roller and the anvil and are cut into short lengths which are spewed out of a nozzle into the path of a fluid spray. Because up to six strands may be employed it is difficult to maintain the cut strands of glass centered in the spray. With one strand the glass cuttings may be spewed to the right or left missing part of the streams of resin spray. A typical roving cutter is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,491,443 issued Jan. 22, 1970.
Further, since the shape of the spray in many of these spray guns may vary according to the size and type of nozzle attached to the spray gun the path of the spray may not always be the same. For example, one such gun for spraying plural components is disclosed and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,123,007 issued Oct. 31, 1978. The plural component spray system of this patent provides a flat fan shaped spray exiting and adjustable nozzle which is most common.
It is therefore one object of the present invention to provide an adjustable roving cutter which will evenly inject glass cuttings in a plural component spray.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a roving cutter adjustment to adjust both vertically and horizontally the direction of cuttings injected into a plural component spray.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a roving cutter steering mechanism attached to a plural component spray gun having a cam operated adjustment to steer the roving cuttings into the optimum path of the plural component spray.